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I 100% guarantee that if (god i fucking hope so) he loses next year you wont find a single GOP official, anywhere in the country that "Liked him/Supported his policies/supported him" and they will all to a person call for "Unity" and "Healing" and "Lets move the nation forward/past this period of division" and other worthless hypocritical platitudes.

And the Mouthbreathing idiots that make up the bulk of the GOP base will eat it all up and like the goldfish they are will forget about everything. 5y from now you wont be able to find a single voter that Voted for Trump.

Edir- im very sorry to the goldfish community for disparaging them with such an abhorrent comparison

I was really young at the time, but the vibe I got was a lot of people still supported W Bush because of the fervor 9/11 caused. There were certainly wary individuals and those who were anti-iraq from the get go, but as it dragged on there was a noticeable change in public perception.

Now admittedly there are people blaming Obama for 9/11 so I'm not claiming Trump's situation won't be any different from the way perception changed about George w and Iraq--- but I have a severe lack of faith in the education system when it comes to critical thinking. Franky, the schools can afford to offer a class in critical thinking are generally in wealthier neighborhoods where the individual benefits less for a multitude of reasons. So. Yup.

He was referring to how the party distanced itself from Bush during/after the election. He was persona non grata for a really long time.

Up until the election they all loved him, though. The difference between then and now is that now all of these assholes are proclaiming their love for Trump on Twitter and other online media so it won't be as easy for them to claim they weren't all up in his asshole after the fact.

There were certainly wary individuals and those who were anti-iraq from the get go, but as it dragged on there was a noticeable change in public perception

I was in middle school at the time but I followed politics, I felt because the independent groups tasked with investigating for WMDs couldn't find anything that it was a bad idea to go to war with iraq. I had a teacher who was saying how the war in iraq is great, he asked if anyone didn't approve of it, I said I didn't and he said I didn't support the troops. I said i support them more than him because I want them home where it's safe. I got sent to the principal's office.

People were gung fucking ho about that war, the anti war people like myself were not always treated with respect

Talk to people who can recall what George W was like before 9/11 and you'll get an interesting conversation. I remember him being completely ineffective and wondering how he plans on winning a re-election with how pathetic he had been in office up until that point.

the vibe I got was a lot of people still supported W Bush because of the fervor 9/11 caused. There were certainly wary individuals and those who were anti-iraq from the get go, but as it dragged on there was a noticeable change in public perception.

Correct. GW had one of the highest public approval ratings in history. It took a long while for that to trail off and the great recession closed the book.

I remember in 2006-2008 you could hardly find anyone that openly stated that they voted for Bush. They also actively kept him away from any part of the 2008 election. I think this will be the same with Trump.

I also want Main Justice to stop fucking fining these companies and Executives for stealing from the American people through unscrupulous business practices and outright fraud...nail these White Collar criminals to the fuckin wall with big nails.

Whats a Billion dollars to BOA or Wells Fargo? Its a fucking operating expense imo.

But, hold the fuck up, if I fuck up as a General Contractor and defraud someone or even fuck my contract up somehow i face TRIPLE DAMAGES on the ENTIRE COST of the contract and face a very real prospect of being jailed.

But some corporate asshole orchestrates the theft of BILLIONS at some bank and the company pays the fine and dude pulls the ripcord on his golden parachute and retires to Turks and Caicos

Calling for unity, stop all the divisive political talk, move on, look forward, etc etc all dog whistles to their buddies tone down the Trump love, they’ve taken down the MAGA profile pics and the profile image of muscular Trump in front of a flag and tank or whatever the fuck weird shit they had.

Maybe living in the Northeast gives you a different perspective...but in the South, even after Trump inevitably loses, he's going to remain a Reagan like figure for a lot of people. You may not have Senators that still overtly embrace Trumpism, but in non-statewide elections, youre definitely going to have a lot more than "a single politician" proudly embracing it.

C'mon man. What evidence do you guys have for any of this? You make it sound like the GOP spent 10 solid years trying to get rid of protections for preexisting conditions, filed a lawsuit to get rid of protections for preexisting conditions, then tried to campaign as the best protectors of coverage for preexisting conditions.

I'll own it. I voted for Bush twice. I was 18 and 22 when I voted for him, and I was raised in a conservative/Fox News watching household and didn't really know any better (my fault, I should have). I'm sorry, I learned my lesson.

Fortunately for us sane people, the internet archive will remember this forever. It's on us to keep reminding them when they try to backtrack on the bullshit they've put us through these last couple of years.

So many in the GOP were complicit that if we offer amnesty for all crimes prior to a specific date it could trigger a Kessler syndrome of corruption & air out both parties.

It could be a clean slate for America. Expose it all, write real legislation with teeth to prevent it & actually prosecute afterwards.

Dems have to sweep in 2020 and use their political capital on election security, election integrity, voter enshrinement, fixing campaign finance & also implementing an alternative fundraising system which wont invite future corruption & give politicians time to politic.

I'd like to see the first hundred dollars of your tax return go into an account you can donate to pols with matching funds.

After all this it's not enough for me to just go back to normal. Normal was broken & that's why Trump won, we have to fix things & drain the swamp like Trump promised.

No amnesty. If Andrew Johnson had exiled or executed the rebel leaders instead of letting them reintegrate into society, we might not be dealing with these issues today. We shouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

Just like they are now the anti-investigation party despite years of investigating Benghazi, blowjobs, e-mails, and everything else they could try to dredge up about the Clintons and Obama. When they were grandstanding in Whitaker's hearing about these hearings being a "huge waste of time", it made me sick to my stomach. I only hope Democrats will double down the more the GOP kicks and screams to get their way.

I'm fully though the looking glass with Republicans. They act and argue in bad faith, they don't care about any of this bullshit like dijon mustard & the war on Christmas.

All this stuff is to drag us into a fight at the time & place of their choosing that they can afford to lose because they never honestly cared. It's all a game, they don't care about anything except winning.

While impeachment followed by prosecution is the legally correct way, the easiest way to get rid of him is through 6 or so Republican state committees. All they have to do is pass rules requiring any candidate in the primary to release 10 of his/her last 12 years of tax returns, or the candidates name is removed from the ballot, and no delegates will be awarded for the convention to him/her. Trump will resign rather than release this evidence.

Another rule that could be passed is, no candidate’s name can be on the primary or general election ballot, if that person is under state indictment, in any state, or federal indictment, for criminal charges. This would fall under the “good character” provisions that some state parties have in their rules.

Lol my whole family says this now "I voted for the dumb mother fucker, but it's better than Hillary!" Aka they are trying to justify their vote for a criminal that they hate, but didn't want Hillary cause you know, her emails. It's infuriating.

They did the same thing with Bush jr. Magically I couldn't find a single republican that supported Bush after he left office spite how vocal they all were in supporting anything he did while in office.

Yup. I had friends in 2007 who wore "one Clinton was enough" t shirts everywhere. Dudes are under twenty at that time so under thirteen when Clinton left office. So under five when Clinton took office. I'll let you guys how much of it was policy and how much was family and society

This is definitely false. I live in Louisiana and out of my 2800 hundred friends on Facebook, maybe 4 disapprove of Trump-diddly. I'm not sure where the media gets these stats, but it most certainly doesn't include the south.

I was listening to some Republican on some podcast the other day, and he basically made the argument that he knew what he was getting with Hillary and didn't like it. He didn't know what he was going to get with Trump, but he was willing to find out.

I wonder how many of those types of voters are out there and have now since determined that rolling the dice on Trump was a mistake. And out of those people, I wonder how many will not vote or vote Democrat or vote Independent.

There are a bunch of decent conservative people out there, that don't have strong views on gender or race, that just have incorrect assumptions on how healthcare bills and tax codes should be written. These people probably grew up in a Red area and go to church frequently. These people probably looked at Trump, saw a complete fucking monster, and then squinted real hard until they saw something else.

Yep thats my relatives in a nut shell. They just flat out refuse to believe anything bad about him. I just sit there stupefied as I try to explain all the bad shit he's done to the LBGT community up to and including providing evidence and they just deny it.

Honestly its truly heartbreaking how
Invested they are in the idea of the man that they've totally divorced themselves from logic. Its very hard for me not to out right loathe them for it.

Just because they can tell themselves they're decent people & sleep well at night doesn't mean they are.

They're not decent people if they're willing to look past all the bigotry & lies because they hope they'll get a tax break (and downright stupid if they can't accept that even the "tax break" was a lie). They're not decent people if they blindly believe what their church says without putting any critical thought into supporting the most un-Christian man in recent history.

I mean, I’ve known of Trump for a while. But back in the day, I didn’t know he was overtly racist. I didn’t know all of the Russian connections. I didn’t know about all the sexual assault stuff. I didn’t know about how he thought 9/11 would’ve worked out differently if they were still allowed to put asbestos in buildings. I didn’t know most of the crazy shit from his life until starting in 2012. For the longest time I just thought he was a reality show hack. Never watched that show. Never gave him a second thought.

But, the second he came down that tacky fucking elevator and went on a racist rant, everyone should have known then exactly what they were getting themselves into. No excuses past that point.

Oh, for sure. Their purported false dichotomy of the Trump/Hillary dilemma is completely fueled by the conservative conspiracy theory driven propaganda machine. Started with Newt.

I have had many people tell me that they didn't vote because Hillary and Trump were equally bad. That's like saying that someone who chews with their mouth slightly open is just as bad as a serial rapist.

Canadian here, I have a fair bit of American facebook friends because I was in a TCG scene in my teens. While they are all rational people their political posts seemed to get some of the most insane replies. I never understood the hatred for Hillary Clinton. Didn't she spend time campaigning for disability access in Boston or something when she was younger? How does that not even get brought up during the campaign?

She was an ambitious woman who was married to a popular and charismatic Democratic president. And her and Bill’s politics were juuust conservative enough, and they were savvy and charismatic enough, that they could get around any kind of legitimate criticism from the right.

So they started making shit up, and it became so effective they saw no reason to stop, and that’s how you get pizzagate

Im willing to bet there were quite a few people like that. It is also why Bernie was so popular, he represented something vastly different from the status quo, but the democratic party leaders weren't on board with a 'risky' populist candidate who didn't properly line up with the assumed democratic party ideology.

If he is still in office for the election I think the wheels will just come off the whole fucking system. Do you have any idea how much dirty money he cleaned between 2000/2010? Anyone who cares to know knows, so what does the motherfucking FBI know?

The entire party is fucking terrified of the Trump base. If they go against him in any way, they'll all lose their jobs, in addition to splitting the Republican base and assuring the House and Senate are both lost for at least a few cycles

And yet, when it comes to doing the actual vote, they'll vote straight ticket (R) every time, even if Trump was at the top of that list, because to them anyone is better than someone with a (D) next to their name.

I would consider a 3rd party or independent in a local race, but I will never vote for anyone who continues to affiliate themselves with what the Republican Party has become. It shows me their judgement and morals and disqualifies them from office.

2012 Republican, you don't understand how macroeconomics work, but whatever as long as you aren't a socially conservative asshole.

2019 Republican, you got some splainin to do for why you're still aligning yourself with the party of fascism.

EDIT: and let me be clear, there's been a creeping fascism in the GOP for a long time. But there was more to the GOP than just the fascism that most people didn't even notice. Now, though, the fascism is on the surface, and it takes willful ignorance not to see.

Exactly! I am a little insane the extent I go researching every candidate but I want to know that I made the most informed decision I possibly could. The last few elections I have voted straight D maybe with a couple exceptions but ultimately it's about who I agree with and respect.

I will never understand voting for someone simply based on the letter next to their name. It doesn't seem right to me to not know what they stand for. What's the point of voting if you have no idea who you're voting for?

That’s how representation is supposed to work. The majority is supposed to vote for candidates with stances they agree with. Voting blindly along party lines is a dangerous practice no matter what side of the division you tend towards.

Unfortunately, research takes effort. Trying to research enough to see through political spin takes even more effort, and people are inherently lazy. I can’t do anything about anyone else, but at least I can help my wife and friends try to make INFORMED decisions. Tools like Vote Save America help out a lot too!

That’s an extremely self aware statement. Current politics almost force us to vote the party line. In the house and senate the representatives seem to almost always tow the party line. If a majority of your beliefs align with the party but someone from the other party is closer to your actual views, it’s hard to vote for them because they’ll generally vote with their party instead of what they ran on. I find myself voting across party lines for local elections, but I can rarely bring myself to vote outside the party for other elected positions.

Most people do this - primarily because most people aren't informed down-ballot. I was talking about this the other day. Like what has a POTUS done in the past 50 years that actually put a sandwich on your table?

The important elections are your local elections. We focus on national politics WAY too much because the media is oriented that way.

I also love that the responses to your comment are "that's because republicans are ign'ant and we be the most real!" It's just more bigotry.

The national elections are important too. Look at the tax changes that people are starting to learn is costing them money they were expecting to get. In your argument, you could say that last year’s Congress and the President have taken hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of sandwiches OFF of your table.

This isn’t a well informed question. Here are a couple examples of things from the 3 most recent presidents that directly impact people’s incomes:

If you’re a farmer, you likely have been affected by the Trump tariffs. soybean farmers are particularly hurting. Trump wants to cut programs like Federal Work Study (ya know, a sandwich for students).

G.W. Bush sent rebate checks to households, which expanded the national debt by billions. Then he launched two multi-trillion dollar wars. Then came the Great Recession. Yay?

Obama extended unemployment benefits to put sandwiches on the tables of tens of thousands workers who were hurt by the Great Recession.

One of the things I love about living in Oregon is that not only is my ballot delivered to me in the mail but that I have two weeks to fill it out at home and drop it off at a designated drop site. It means that I can look up candidates on the internet if there's not enough information on the voter pamphlet that comes with my ballot.

In my state, we get a voter pamphlet which explains in plain english what each measure or bill will do. It also includes arguments for and against the measure that are clearly marked with who the argument is from. It also includes statements from each candidate running for office.

I wish that other states would clone our system. It would make voting much easier for everyone and increase voter participation.

An unsurprising amount of Republicans fuckin lie though. They hated him until he won the nomination.

This is their greatest power. Fox News 180'd from hammering Trump 24x7 to acting like he was Jesus, in about 24 hours. And everyone a lot of people that watch that channel do as they're told. It works. And it'll work again.

Help me out... I finally looked up what Roll Tide means after seeing it several times, but I’m still not sure I understand your usage here. Is it to sarcastically express pride in Alabama because that’s where you / your mom is from?

I would think that any republican besides Trump could even be a contender against whoever our democrat nominee is. I feel like there are enough disenfranchised republicans who won’t vote for trump but would vote for another republican. I think most republicans are so attached to the conservative label that they would vote for any republican over a democrat, just like my dad.

Until the point at which the news says “Donald Trump has conceded the election”, I’m not listening to any of this. Too many people thought he wouldn’t get in in the first place, and look what happened.

If even one Republican has the stones to declare they're running against Trump for the party nomination, we'll see a tidal wave of candidates crop up. They're chickenshit, but if the tide starts to turn against Trump in their party, they'll all jump ship.

It is astonishing that an overwhelming majority of Americans are progressive, yet right before what could very well be a political renaissance that finally brings America up to par with other progressive nations, the Republican Party seizes control against the will of the people and halts any progressive agenda. The Republican Party, along with their decades of power grabbing techniques are the only thing standing between us and a new golden age of American life. I don’t know who’s going to be president after Trump, but Trump will be the last President of the Republican Party. Nobody will vote for them after what they see progressive Democrats can do for this country

It is astonishing that an overwhelming majority of Americans are progressive,

But may not realize it, just as many people hate Obamacare, but most of the very same people approve of the Affordable Care Act, which is the same thing. Or they hate socialism but like their Social Security and Medicare (and want government to keep its hands out of it).

Many years earlier, a poll asked Americans what they thought of foreign aid, and the majority wanted it cut back drastically, to a level over twice as high as it was at the time.

It is astonishing that an overwhelming majority of Americans are progressive

LoL what? No they aren't. Progressive doesn't mean you said yes to supporting medicare for all once on a survey.

yet right before what could very well be a political renaissance that finally brings America up to par with other progressive nations, the Republican Party seizes control against the will of the people and halts any progressive agenda.

Yeah because they got a ton of votes from people who are decidedly not progressive at all, and hate progressive policies.

Nobody will vote for them after what they see progressive Democrats can do for this country

I sure hope so but there's going to be massive Republican resistance to any agenda other than their own. Republican voters exist. They aren't secretly progressives. This is a serious battle that needs to be won, don't celebrate prematurely.

Nobody who has to be around Trump likes Trump. He's a lazy, irritating idiot who constantly fucks up plans and is barely functional otherwise.

Trump supporters only like Trump because they only see him in incredibly narrow, flattering contexts, and only when they choose to see him at all. If your only impression of Trump is what you see on Fox News, or at a rally, then you think he's a capable genius. If you've ever had to interact with Trump in any kind of sustained way you fucking hate him.

I work around a number of Trump supporters and it's been rather amusing watching the slow change in their demeanor when it comes to Trump, their support of him, and how confident they are facing the future.

Where a few months ago I was met with being scoffed at for thinking there was any issues with Trump and that Democrats were just looking for something, anything to bring him down.

Now I get the "I don't discuss politics at work" or something along those lines. Guess 37 indictments, a government shut down, constant investigations, suspicious actions with foreign governments, questionable business practices 2 years into his term, a slew of racist remarks and actions, lies on top of lies, and more has made some Trump supporters a little less likely to show their asses when it comes to blindly supporting him.

I think my favorite part is how Fox News went from being a constant in the break room to now there's daily talk shows and soap operas on more often than not.

The damage Trump is doing is unbelievable - and Republicans have been happy to go along with it as some kind of “side show” while they stack the courts with conservative judges.

All Republicans up for re-election in 2020 need to be completely voted out of power. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. With the U.S. (and in fact the entire world) having to listen to the ramblings of a narcissistic moron for two years, it’s time they got taught a lesson by voters about abusing their position and putting party before country.

yeah, because they know the longer he stays, the shorter the party's future is. That's not hyperbole, trump is doing tremendous damage to core elements of their platform. Throughout recent history there have been key things that sane people knew that the republicans can be counted on for like defense spending, now trump has established that they have no set principals and will do or say anything and violate any norm for the sake of power. Right now the only thing floating them are the elderly who aren't really in touch with the actual state of the party and simply voting based on what the GOP was like in the past, and certain constituent groups with very specific special interests, all of which are shrinking. The Republicans can't survive if they lose cache with the center, they have to be seen as 'the adults in the room' and they're losing that with every second trump stays in office. The problem is that trump has them by the nuts, they can't win without his core, so their only choice is to lose power now or lose power when their constituencies dye out and maybe find someone new to support them in the meantime.

He's still extremely popular with people in places where votes count. We're no where near safe for 2020 -- not by a long shot. He still holds a very decent chance of winning just because of his GOP backing.

By percentage, 2018 was the worst party loss in decades. Yes, it was worse than 2010. Everyone is so gun shy to state the obvious because he won in 2016 but the data is clear - Trump is likely to lose in a landslide in 2020. Of course he can win, but there is no data that projects good news for him.

Yep, and an important thing to remember is Trump has a lot to lose in this election. If he doesn't win re-election, he's extremely likely to go to prison. If you've ever seen any dictators who fight to stay in power, you'll know it's never pretty trying to oust them. Trump will not go down without a fight and will make a call of illegitimacy in our elections.

Yep -- if he somehow lost, it would be the first time we would see the US leadership not participate in a peaceful and organized transfer of power. We've never experienced that and no one is sure how it would be dealt with.

But for now, Trump has overwhelmingly positive polling with republican voters. That's all he really needs to seal a win with the way the electoral college is configured, population is distributed, and the people who are most likely to vote vs stay at home.

He ain't so popular in a bunch of the swing states that won it for him in 2016. Even with gigantic infusions of cash from the Kochs and greater GOP, we beat Wisconsin's tumor Scott Walker last year by 1.2%, and that's before people start realizing just how little good the tax scam is doing them and before it was clear the wall was a nonsense promise.

But yeah, if there's one thing I don't have to worry about, it's overconfidence.

"How do you impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time, done nothing wrong (no Collusion with Russia, it was the Dems that Colluded), had the most successful first two years of any president, and is the most popular Republican in party history 93%?" he tweeted earlier this month.